Narendra Modi has done it again. He has won a third successive term as the Prime Minister of India, a hat-trick in the lingo of that game which the country so celebrates. In doing so, he has matched the electoral record of the first prime minister of India, Jawaharlal Nehru.
People may advance different reasons for his doing so, but I think they will all fall short because he wins for something which has more to do with emotion than reason. He wins because of how he makes people feel. He makes them feel recognised, he makes them feel counted, and, above all, he makes them feel proud.
He made us feel that he understood the private problem of millions of women in the countryside when he spoke of the lack of domestic bathroom facilities from the ramparts of the Red Fort. He made them feel that there was someone who knew their problems. And it made me feel proud that, finally, we had a prime minister who chose to address the problem they face, a problem of which I became acutely aware while serving in the remote villages of India as an IAS officer in the 1960s.
When he learnt that the politics of Panchayati Raj was causing dissension in villages, he offered special funds for those villages where the Panchayat was elected by consensus. It made me feel ashamed that I had not thought of this as the District Development Officer of Ahmedabad.
He made one feel proud of one’s Hindu heritage when, questioned about his future plans in London, he quoted a verse from the Bhagavata Purana: “I do not seek heaven, or a kingdom, or even Moksha. All I seek is to bring an end to the suffering of those who suffer.” He similarly made one feel proud, when, addressing the gathering at Davos, Switzerland, he quoted the concluding verses of the Rig Veda: “May you talk together, may you walk together…” He made us feel proud of our Islamic heritage, when he offered a chadar at the shrine of Moinuddin Chishti at Ajmer. And he made us feel proud of our Christian heritage when he greeted the Christians of Goa on the day of the Feast of Saint Xavier.
He made us proud of our linguistic heritage when he addressed the President of the United States in Hindi. Or, when he speaks to the people of Tamil Nadu in Tamil, of Karnataka in Kannada, and of Andhra in Telugu.
He made us proud of our cultural resilience when he inaugurated the Ram Temple on January 22, 2024, by installing the image of Ram Lalla at the very spot where it was destroyed. He made us proud when he included men and women of all castes, as yajamanas along with him, on that occasion.
He made us proud of our martial heritage when he replaced the naval ensign used by the Indian Navy, that of St. George’s Cross, with one inspired by the royal seal of Chhatrapati Shivaji, when India’s first indigenous aircraft carrier, INS Vikrant, was commissioned in 2022.
We may forget what people have said to us, or lectured to us on, or commented upon, but we never forget how someone makes us feel.
Prime Minister Modi has not forgotten this.
The writer is Birks Professor in Comparative Religion at McGill University, Montreal
